AS THE world recoils at the horrific
possibility of al-Qaeda terrorists waging anthrax war
against United States citizens, the Sunday Herald can
reveal that Britain manufactured five million anthrax cattle
cakes during the second world war and planned to drop them
on Germany in 1944.

The aim of Operation Vegetarian was to wipe out the
German beef and dairy herds and then see the bacterium
spread to the human population. With people then having no
access to antibiotics, this would have caused many thousands
-- perhaps even millions -- of German men, women and
children to suffer awful deaths.

The anthrax cakes were tested on Gruinard Island, off
Wester Ross, which was finally cleared of contamination in
1990. Operation VEGETARIAN was
planned for the summer of 1944 but, in the event, it was
abandoned as the Allies' Normandy invasion progressed
successfully.

Details of the wartime secret operation are contained in
a series of War Office files (WO 188) at the Public Record
Office in Kew. Some of the files are still classified . The
man whose task was to carry out Operation Vegetarian was
Dr Paul Fildes, director of the biology department at
Porton Down near Salisbury in Wiltshire. Fildes had
previously been in charge of the Medical Research Council's
bacterial chemistry unit at Middlesex Hospital.

In early 1942, Fildes began searching Britain for
suppliers and manufacturers of linseed-oil cattle cake to
make five million small cakes. Large quantities of the
bacillus itself had to be produced, while special containers
to carry the cattle cakes had to be designed and made. Some
RAF bombers had to be modified to deliver the
anthrax-infected payload. And all of it had to be done as
cheaply as possible.

The
raw material for the cake was provided by the Olympia Oil
and Cake Company in Blackburn. The contract to cut the
cattle cake into small pieces went to J & E Atkinson of
Bond Street in London, perfumers and toilet-soap
manufacturers and suppliers to the royal family. The
Atkinsons calculated that they could produce 180,000 to
250,000 cakes, each 2.5cm in diameter and 10 grammes in
weight, in a 44-hour week. The price was to be between 12
and 15 shillings per thousand. The firm pledged to deliver
5,273,400 cakes by April 1943. By the middle of July 1942,
the Atkinsons informed Fildes that 'we are now producing at
the rate of 40,000 per day'.

The anthrax was manufactured by the Ministry of
Agriculture and Fisheries at its veterinary laboratory in
Surrey. An Oxford academic named Dr E Schuster was set to
work devising the pump to inject the bacilli into the cattle
cakes. The Porton Down scientists settled on cube-shaped
cardboard containers, 18cm square, to carry the infected
foodstuff.

Each held 400 cakes. They would be fitted with a steel
handle 'of a size which enables the operator to grasp the
handle without difficulty when wearing thick leather or
moleskin gloves ...' Thirteen women were then recruited from
various soap-making firms, sworn to secrecy and given the
job of injecting the cattle cakes with anthrax spores.

At the same time, Fildes and his team were working on the
best way to deliver the diseased cattle feed to the German
herds.

The RAF's research unit came up with a simple solution --
easily made wooden trays that fitted on to aircraft flare
chutes. Their Bomber Command Lancasters, Halifaxes and
Stirlings were chosen for the job.

By the beginning of 1944, Operation
VEGETARIAN was ready to go. It was
crucial to mount any attack in the summer months. Fildes
said: 'The cattle must be caught in the open grazing fields
when lush spring grass is on the wane.' 'Trials have shown
that these tablets ... are found and consumed by the cattle
in a very short time. 'Cattle are concentrated in the
northern half of Oldenburg and northwest Hanover. Aircraft
flying to and from Berlin will fly over 60 miles of grazing
land.'

Fildes calculated that, at an average ground speed of
300mph, the distance would be covered in 18 minutes. 'If one
box of tablets is dispersed every two minutes, then each
aircraft will be required to carry and disperse nine, or say
10, boxes.'

One Lancaster bomber returning from a raid on Berlin
would be able to scatter 4000 anthrax-infected cakes over a
60-mile swathe in less than 20 minutes. A dozen aircraft
would have been enough to litter most of the north German
countryside with anthrax spores. Operation
VEGETARIAN was a seriously deadly
project.

But, by the time Fildes's operation was ready to go in
the summer of 1944, the Normandy invasion had taken place
and Allied armies were crashing through northern France and
up through Italy. The war against Nazi Germany was instead
being won by conventional means. At the end of 1945, five
million anthrax-infected cattle cakes were incinerated in
one of Porton Down's furnaces.